The new colonial movement heats up: Ahmadinejad said today that by March 2012 Iran plans to launch a host of home-built satellites on its own home-built rocket.
One of the competitor’s for the Google Lunar X prize has signed a contract with SpaceX to use the Falcon 9 to get its spacecraft to the Moon. Key quote:
The Falcon 9 upper stage will sling Astrobotic on a four-day cruise to the Moon. Astrobotic will then orbit the moon to align for landing. The spacecraft will land softly, precisely and safely using technologies pioneered by Carnegie Mellon University for guiding autonomous cars. The rover will explore for three months, operate continuously during the lunar days, and hibernate through the lunar nights. The lander will sustain payload operations with generous power and communications.
Robots in action! The robot arm Dextre did its first work on ISS this week, unloading two payloads from the Japanese unmanned freighter that docked with the station last week.
While NASA retreats to building a capsule, two private companies push commercial spaceplane concepts.
This nicely illustrates the contrasting levels of innovation between NASA and the private sector.
Secrets of the Soviet N1 Moon rocket.
If you’re interested, seats are available for a tourist trip around the moon in a Soyuz capsule. And the Russians say the Soyuz is ready to go!
Mark Kelly, Congresswoman Giffords’ astronaut husband, has decided to fly his shuttle mission.
The military space war between China and the U.S.
A natural gas leak prompted the evacuation of several buildings at Kennedy Space Center today, including the Vehicle Assembly Building and the Orbiter Processing Facility.
On Monday Stardust did a final mid-course correction in anticipation of its February 14 fly-by of of Comet Tempel 1.
The crew of a simulated 500 day long Mars mission has reached “Mars orbit” after 8 months of confinement in a facility in Russia.
Russia regains contact with missing military satellite, finds that it was placed in the wrong orbit.
An evening pause: On this day eight years ago, the space shuttle Columbia broke up as it returned from orbit. Rather than watch that sad sight again, I’d rather remember the shuttle’s achievements. Watch this footage of Columbia’s first landing on April 14, 1981, which proved it was possible to glide powerless back from space and land safely on a runway. Though we as a nation might be abandoning this approach right now, future generations will use this as their standard way to return to Earth.
Several things to note as you watch the video. First, the shuttle’s angle of descent is extremely and frighteningly steep, until the very last moment. And every shuttle landing is like this. The shuttle is heavy, but it is still attempting to glide powerless to a landing. To do so it needs the thickness of the atmosphere combined with high speed to give it lift. Thus, it plows downward at a mucher higher speed and angle than any airplane, then quickly levels out at the last moment.
Secondly, this first landing did not have a drogue chute to slow the shuttle down. Rather than complicate things, they simply let the shuttle roll until it came to a stop.
Using fishing nets to catch space junk.
Discovery has once again rolled out to the launch pad for its final mission.
The Air Force’s second X-37B space plane is now scheduled for a March 4 launch. Key quote:
“We want to be able to put an object up into space, materials, technology and so forth, test them out, bring them back and examine them,” said Richard McKinney, deputy under secretary of the Air Force for space programs. “In that respect, this is a test vehicle.”
A look back at the V2 rocket.
The chimp that took America into space.
Bring on those private space stations! Bigelow Aerospace has signed an agreement with Dubai and United Arab Emirates.
Another freighter, this time from Russia, docks with ISS.
An evening pause: Twenty-five years ago today.
The final words in Reagan’s speech come from a poem by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ing there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
Where never lark, or even eagle flew;
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
Using skateboards to test a prototype lunar lander.
Today is the 25th anniversary of the Challenger accident. There are innumerable links from many sources talking about the event, too many for me to list here. You can find most at this link on Jeff Foust’s website, spacetoday.net.
Though I think it is very important for us to remember and honor these events, I have become somewhat disenchanted with the modern American obsession with memorials and anniversaries. Rather than build a memorial, I’d much rather we focused entirely on building new spaceships, new space stations, and new lunar bases, while flying multi-year missions on ISS, all in preparation for exploring and colonizing the solar system.
If we actually made the solar system a place for humans to live in and explore, we would build a far better memorial to those who have sacrificed their lives for the sake of exploration. And I think these heroes would be far more pleased by that memorial than by a stone statue or emotional op-ed that describes their courage.
Another Japanese space success today: Its second robot cargo vehicle has successfully docked at ISS.
Ikaros takes a picture of Venus.
More solar sail news: Japan’s solar sail mission, IKAROS, has been extended for a year. Key quote:
With the extended lease on life, the team will try new navigational tricks, such as varying the sail’s angle toward the sun and changing the craft’s trajectory. Mori called these “risky” maneuvers because they are not sure if the sail will remain fully extended. They intend to model the sail’s behavior and the craft’s response to plan future solar sail missions.
How’s this for your evening television entertainment: Beginning 8 pm on Saturday, NASA TV will show the docking of the next Russian Progress freighter to ISS.
The federal government has lifted the import security restrictions that existed against India, which will give that country better access to America’s most sophisticated technologies, and thus be a boon for its space industry.
